Good & Profitable Weekend

This weekend I stayed local for what was to be some of the hardest riding I’ve done to date. Saturday I headed out with the local Habersham Bicycles group ride in the morning to prime the legs and get ready for the rest of my day of suffering. I had a good ride, and came out of that first hour with my legs ready to go. A friend had agreed to ride the next three hours with me, and we headed out about an hour after I finished the first ride for the most painful ride I’ve had all year. The store stop that we had agreed on was on a hill about a mile-mile and a half up a 3-4 mile climb. We hit this store stop at only about two hours into our ride, but I was already starting to get tired and cramp. The stop was very welcome, and afterwards we headed up the rest of the climb only to have Stephen get a flat about 5 minutes after the stop. After we fought the yellow jackets off and got his flat fixed, we headed off for the rest of our ride, which was pretty much a game of lets see how many times Dustin will cramp (no thanks sports legs). This all culminated of course in the middle of town where my legs fully locked up for about 5 minutes and we had to stop until I could get back on my bike to finish the 3-4 miles it would take to get back home. After it was all said and done, my normalized power for the day was about 250 watts with my ride time being 4 hours and 2 minutes.
Yesterday was no different in that I went out to get a good, solid effort in and push myself once more. I went solo this time, but waited until about 6pm to head out due to the heat that’s been around lately. I ended up with about 2 hours 15 minutes and had a normalized wattage of 260 something I think, lol. Regardless of wattage, my training stress for the weekend was enough for three days of riding, so I’ll be taking it easy today and tomorrow with a few short intervals Wednesday to prepare for the Gwinnett Bike Fest coming up Thursday-Sunday. I’ll try and keep you updated!